Friday, May 18, 2018

Announcement - I'm happy to announce anew
JSL product - a unique bar/bat mitzvah gift — a customized book that
details the chain of Tradition from Moses to the bar or bat mitzvah
child. Please see barmitzvahalbum.com and share the link with everyone.

Imagine
a project at Harvard to convene the greatest scholars in every field
over a period of several hundred years in order to create an
encyclopedia of their collective knowledge. Who wouldn't want to see the
final product?

This is
the Talmud: a unique collection of wisdom that would surprise experts in
any discipline, including law, ethics, psychology and economics. In the
realm of cosmology, too, the Talmud makes assertions -- sometimes
literal, sometimes metaphoric, and sometimes both. To give one example, consider the Talmudic estimate of the number and distribution of stars in the universe. In order
to appreciate this passage, bear in mind two things. First, the vast
bulk of Talmudic wisdom is claimed to be a transmitted tradition, from
Moses to Joshua, to the prophets, to the Elders, to the Great Assembly,
and then to a chain of scholars until the completion of the Talmud 1,500
years ago. Hence it is called the Oral Law. Second,
we need to appreciate the limitations of science 1,500 years ago: the
telescope was invented in the 16th century, and the number of stars
visible to the naked eye is approximately 9,000. So what
did these ancient rabbis say about the number of stars? In Tractate
Brachot, page 32b, the Talmud records a tradition, in the name of Rabbi
Shimon ben Lakish, that there are roughly 1018 stars in the universe. This number is remarkably big and much closer to the current scientific consensus of 1022 than common sense would allow. Now,
although it is interesting for an ancient people to have such a large
estimate, this single coincidence could perhaps be explained as an
extremely lucky guess. Never mind that no other ancient people had an
estimate anywhere near this order of magnitude, nor did they have a
conventional way to write such a number. (I have queried dozens of
astronomers and none could identify a single other ancient culture with
remotely similar numbers.)

Multiple Patterns

However,
the Talmud relates more than a raw number. The passage explains that
the distribution of stars throughout the cosmos is neither even nor
random. Rather, it states that they are clustered in groups of billions
of stars (what we call galaxies), which themselves are clustered into
groups (what astronomers call galactic clusters), which in turn are in
mega-groups (what we call superclusters). To
describe the stars as clustered together, both locally and in clusters
of clusters, was far beyond the imagination and the telescopes of
scientists until Edwin Hubble's famous photographs of Andromeda in the
1920s. Galactic clusters and superclusters have been described only in
the past decade or so. Moreover, the Talmud states that the number of
galaxies in a cluster is about 30. And by coincidence, astronomers today
set the number of galaxies in our own local cluster at about 30!1 Further,
the Talmud adds that the superclusters consist of about 30 clusters
each, and that superclusters are themselves grouped into a bigger
pattern of about 30 (megasuperclusters?) of which the universe has a
total of about 360. Thus, the Talmud appears consistent with one major
theory that the overall structure of the universe is shaped by the rules
of fractal mathematics. I've shown this data to numerous astronomers
around the world and the consensus are pure astonishment. Could it
be that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish made an extremely lucky guess? That
might be plausible if he had used a number that had symbolic significance
in Judaism, such as seven, 10, 18 or 40. What is the significance of
the number 30? To my knowledge, there is no spiritual or religious
reason for choosing that number. It therefore seems to be exactly what
it claims to be: a conscientious oral transmission of a received
tradition, rather than simply one person's guesstimate.

Moreover,
Rabbi Shimon had a reputation for impeccable honesty; it is unthinkable
that he would have invented these numbers or guessed without telling us
so. The clear intent of the passage is to convey an oral tradition. You are
now in on the secret of Shavuot: There is something special about the
Torah (and rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated!). The
Torah is much more than a mere "cultural expression" of one tiny group
of ancient people, so numerically small that we reminded Mark Twain of a
"nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way." This
passage about the stars is a mere five Talmudic lines, itself about as
significant as a puff of star dust. But it also hints to the treasures
available to those who seek them. Shavuot is a great time to begin. 1 This
was true several years ago when this article was first written. Since
then, astronomers have discovered “ultra-faint” dwarf galaxies in our
local group, so the official number of galaxies in our group is
presently 54. Some of these are not clearly “galaxies”, such as
Andromeda VIII; some are visible to the naked eye while others are
invisible to all but the best telescopes. The term “local group” was
coined by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1936 and originally included 12
galaxies. It is interesting to note that astronomers now recognize that
31 of these “local group” galaxies are satellites of our Milky Way
galaxy: Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small
Magellanic Cloud, Canis Major Dwarf, Ursa Minor Dwarf, Draco Dwarf, Carina Dwarf, Sextans Dwarf, Sculptor Dwarf, Fornax Dwarf, Leo I, Leo II, Leo IV, Leo V, Leo T, Ursa Major I Dwarf, Ursa Major II Dwarf, Boötes II, Coma Berenices, Segue 2, Hercules, Pisces II, Reticulum II, Eridanus II, Gurs, Tucana II, Horologium, Pictoris, Phoenix
II, Indus, Eridanus III. (I have excluded Boötes III because its
galactic status is in doubt, as well as the nine ultra-faint galaxies
discovered in March, 2015.) The exact number is less interesting to me
than the fractal pattern described in the Talmud is exactly what we
observe through the telescope.

Shabbat Shalom

and Happy Shavuot

PS - Please don't forget to visit barmitzvahalbum.com . . . If you blog, please considering adding this link to your website. If you facebook, how about sharing the link?

Friday, April 20, 2018

The purpose of this blog is to generate some empathy for teenagers - and their parents. (Please like it, tweet it, forward).
Happy Birthday to our son Avramy who is finally able to go buy his old man a bottle of wine!

Last week was the first of a series about our wonderful teens, inspired by the new book Step Into My Shoes.

This week, a few thoughts about this smartphone.

I was tempted to title this email, "Smart Phone, Lazy Brain".

Do you fight or give in?

This is on my mind because we gave one of our teens a phone last week.

Did we give in?

Before you answer, consider the following truths that I personally believe to be true:

PS - If the above links haven't focused your attention, try these two short videos: this and this.

Based on these truths, here are four possible parental interventions to consider:

1. Family rule - everyone (parents included) leaves phone in a different room during meal time.
2. Family rule - everyone (yes everyone) leaves phone in kitchen at bedtime.
3. Family rule - everyone's phone has age-appropriate time limits and scheduled time-outs. These can be easily set up with ourpact.com.4.
Family rule - everyone's phone has parental controls on what apps can
be installed and what websites visited. Mother has father's password,
father has mother's, and parents have kids'.

This week's question for your table: If you are a smart parent and implementing some or all of the above, what do you say in response to, "But no one does that!" or "But everyone has that!" ???

Friday, March 23, 2018

The
purpose of this blog is to inspire you to click some links, and then
do some numerology Shabbat table. Please print and use and share (+ like it, tweet it, forward).
Mazal tov to 3 bnei mitzvah in SF: Chaim Shragge, Luke BloomKing and Spencer Mosson! May you go from strength to strength.

Puzzles
- This year, I'm going to try these as thanks-for-participating Seder
gifts for all ages - the Passover connection is that the Seder - like
life - is a puzzle, and if it isn't challenging, it isn't satisfying.
According to the effort is the reward does't mean we reward you for your
effort, it means that the deep enjoyment of the activity is
proportional to the effort. So check out these really cool puzzles:

So in the story, the supercomputer Deep Thought runs an experiment to
solve this problem. The experiment is called Earth, another
supercomputer, comprised of people who will collectively reveal the
answer (meaning, the question whose answer is 42).

Unfortunately, five minutes before the supercomputer-called-Earth is
going to finally reveal the solution, the planet is destroyed by the
Vogons in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Therefore - if you're still with me - the hyper-intelligent (and rather evil) mice need to quickly invent an
answer (which is really the question) because they're about to go on
the air on a talk show with everybody watching. So after some
debate, they decide that the question (whose answer is 42) would most
plausibly be: "How many roads must a man walk down?"

Now why am I telling you all this?

Two days ago, our son was at a Torah class where the rabbi quoted the 20th Century Chassidic classic, Nesivos Shalom.
The author - the Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky zt”l -
interprets the 42 stages of the Israelites in the wilderness as symbolic
of the 42 paths a person walks in a lifetime.

Flabbergasting.

But now for your table: What's more flabbergasting, that Douglas Adams somehow channeled the Nesivos Shalom? Or that we have 42 paths to walk in our lifetime?

It may be hard for you to concentrate right now because you are so preoccupied with preparing for Pesach.

Just in case you are not feeling enough anxiety, your second question for the table is, How many days until Pesach?

I sense that the question makes you uncomfortable, so we have updated the website with a Passover countdown-clock:

The whole idea was that we're now in Purim season, all the way through next week.

See that crown over there on the left?

If you don't relate very much to Purim, that crown is for you.

Because hidden in that crown you will find a link to a book that will as
sure as eggs is eggs change your understanding of Purim from a romantic
story into a most profound tale of Jewish history, purpose and being.

And like all great Jewish books, it leaves questions unanswered. Much to think about.

Friday, February 09, 2018

The purpose of this blog is to create some DIY wisdom at the Shabbat table. Please print and share (+ like it, tweet it, forward).
Happy birthday shout-outs this week to Marc in SF and Lily in Mill Valley - ad meah v'esrim.

What do you do when your wife is leaving town for a week and says:

"Sorry to saddle you with this, but the washing machine is broken."

Maybe you would call a repairman?

Personally, I first want to know what "broken" means.

Remember the old days, with the purely analog machine?

I miss that old machine, just had a couple buttons, and anything that broke was mechanical.

Do all the electronics really get our clothes cleaner?

Well, there is a Yiddish expression, "Before God sends the disease, he sends the cure."

The cure in this day and age is of course Dr. G.

As in Google.

The last time around, Dr. G. told me that the problem was probably the
thermostat, which was located in the underbelly and the only way to
access it would be to remove the entire rubber seal around the washing
machine's door.

That seemed too daunting so I asked Dr. G. for a second opinion, which
came up as a video of a guy who said, forget that nightmare of trying to
remove (and replace) the rubber seal - just tilt the machine back, prop
it up on a couple bricks, and pull out the thermostat from below.

That's what I did. And Dr. Google told me how to test it - it was working.

So what was the problem?

I crawled back under the machine and looked at the whole setup and it
looked to me like the connector pins were not making a tight connection.
Maybe years of vibrations had loosened them.

So I went and got a tiny piece of aluminum foil and shoved it in there.

Solved the problem, has worked perfectly ever since.

Until last week when my wife was leaving.

This time the error was not the thermostat, it was on the LCD, telling me, "Door open" when the door was tightly closed.

So I did the same thing: removed the faulty piece and studied it, looking for what was loose.

I'm pretty sure I found the problem, bent a small piece of metal a bit and put it back in. Sure enough, that fixed it.

Until it stopped again a few minutes later with the same error.

This went back and forth three times until I realized I wasn't going to fix it this way.

Question for your table: What did I do?

Answer: a tiny piece of foil.

Yes, I was overriding the "open door" safety feature, but at least I got the laundry done.

Question #2 for your table: When is the last time that you tried to fix something yourself, why didn't you call an expert, and how did you feel afterwards?

Shabbat Shalom

Ven tsu a krcnk iz do a refueh, iz dos a halbeh krenk - When there’s a cure for an ailment, it’s only half an ailment.
Far an akshen iz kain refueh nito - For the disease of stubbornness there is no cure.

PS - If your inclined to try DYI repairs but don't know where to start, click on the picture above.